Episode 71 – Ross The Music Teacher Is Now A Coder?

Ross’ Bio:
Ross Trottier attended CU Boulder as a Classical Guitar Performance Major under the virtuoso Jonathan Leathewood, where he received the highest marks for theoretical studies. He currently resides in Colorado Springs, where he teaches and performs full time.  Additionally, when he isn’t teaching and working with his music students, Ross is coding a game-based music theory app to better engage his students and boost their overall learning experience in a fun, creative way.  
Episode Highlights and Show Notes:
Arsalan: Hi, Everyone, and welcome to another episode of Mentoring Developers. Today, my guest is Ross Trottier. Ross is a college dropout, but then, he turned around and became a [music] teacher and wrote a book that’s become a bestseller on Amazon. Ross, how are you? 
Ross: How are you doing? Thanks for having me. 
Arsalan: I’m so glad that I could have you on the show. I’ve been following you on YouTube and I want everybody to know your story. It’s fascinating. So, tell us a little about what happened in college and then what happened after that. 
Ross: So, in college, I was going to school for classical guitar performance. There were a number of things that I was unhappy with concerning the institution and [it was] not what I considered to be the best career path … monetarily speaking. At the end of the day, I didn’t want to become a professor at a school that I wouldn’t be happy at. So, I took my music credits and dropped out and then spent the next few years working at jobs, practicing my music, and continuing my studies with a couple of the teachers that I had back at the college.  
Ross: My time took me out to Oregon where I played cello on the sidewalk and I worked at Intel as a procurement agent. I then returned to the East coast, where my folks live, for a few months. Then, I went ‘full circle’ and ended up back in Colorado where I had started. What I wanted to do was teach guitar. So, I was driving from one house to the next teaching people and living out of my car and sometimes on my friend’s living room floor.  
Ross: One day my car broke down and I had to turn it into a semi-permanent dwelling. I took whatever money that I had left and rented an office. In Colorado, it is very cold at night. So, I spent lots of time in that office and I decided to use that time to make music websites, which started me on the path that I’m on right now — learning to code apps that systematically teach you music in an arcade game format. 
Arsalan: Fascinating story. So, you had a situation where you were going to college and, obviously, when you started you wanted to finish, right?  
Ross: Yes. 
Arsalan: At some point, you realized that it wasn’t worth it because you realized that you were going to spend all this time and money getting all these credits only to get a job to do for you what you wanted it to do. So, when you’re starting out as a freshman and going through the classes and learning, what changed? I’m assuming that your perception of college changed along the way? 
Ross: It started out as [a feeling]. A lot of it seemed practical at first: writing papers and trying to figure out what you wanted to do. I didn’t start out as a music major. I went through a few majors and did a lot of science credits on the side. I did a lot of math as well. Eventually, I landed on music because I fell in love with the classical guitar, which is a bad reason to choose a major and probably why I dropped out. 
Ross: Over time, as I saw how the classical music world worked and how people interacted with each other, it gave me a sour taste. I didn’t like it and I’m not really a big fan of going out to concerts and things. I realized that I really didn’t want to play concerts. I was just in love with being in the practice room, which is something that I do every day religiously.  

Episode source